I've been reading Love is a Story: A New Theory of Relationships by Robert Sternberg. My first contact with this book was actually five years ago, when I was taking a Marriage Family, and Intimate Relationships class in community college. I'd forgotten about it because I never actually read it; the professor just talked to us about the different types of love stories and their meanings. I have no idea what happened to my notes from that class, but I wish I had kept one of the texts we read for it, because it was really interesting. I emailed the professor just now to ask if he still has the syllabus, so hopefully he'll get back to me...

Regardless, I've been reflecting on what kind of love stories I tend to seek out in my relationships (and perhaps friendships in general?). I think I'm drawn to teacher-student relationships, or have been, in the past. Back when I used to talk to Max in 2009/2010, that was pretty evident. I loved chatting with him because he always had something interesting to share with me, and I absorbed it like a sponge. As I've gotten older, though, I've become a bit less enamored with this relation... Maybe due in part to disillusionment stemming from the realization that I kept running into people who just loved to pontificate, without necessarily having worthwhile knowledge to impart. I mistook arrogance for confidence and competence a lot. These days I do much more questioning.

When I think about long term relationships, I tend to imagine something like a business story:

View post on imgur.com

And this excerpt felt sadly relevant to me:

View post on imgur.com

I wonder how much time I've spent in an ultimately fruitless pursuit of something deeper. One of my high school friends was like the onion in this metaphor-- I always thought there must be something more to her than she was letting on, but nothing ever came out in all the years I knew her. For the most part, I tend to assume that people must have interesting and complex thoughts until they consistently express thoughts that are nothing of the sort, but in the presence of silence, that automatic assumption remains. Thus, quiet and reserved people seem interesting and mysterious. It's hard to know whether there really is something genuinely worthwhile developing in their heads unbeknownst to the rest of us or if there's just a cognitive emptiness.

When I'm not feeling down and depressed, I feel like I'm always thinking about a ton of different things at once, and I guess I tend to think it must be the same way for others. I seem to vacillate between feeling like everyone's experience is totally alien to each other and feeling like people are actually much more similar than I'm inclined to give them credit for. It's hard for me to really grasp the idea that some people just don't have... active minds? Similarly, I tend to give people maybe a little too much benefit of the doubt when it comes to things they might know; I find this comes up a lot when I discuss topics in psychology specifically. I'ts not that I think everyone must know what cognitive heuristics and things like that are, but I guess that I tend to think things along the lines of "well, this person I'm talking to is smart and knowledgeable, and psychology is pretty widespread, so it seems possible that they'd have heard of this concept before." Not that I assume they know... usually I ask if they've heard of it. It's extremely condescending to assume they don't know and start explaining, but assuming they do know and not giving context is pretty bad in its own way.

I don't know where I was going with all that. Something else I did want to mention was that when my mom was here, she asked me if I had ever been in love with one of my exes, and I said yes, then asked her if she had ever been in love with my dad. She took a moment to think about it, but said no. I wouldn't say that was particularly surprising to me, and yet I still felt as if I should be shocked or horrified in some way. A marriage without being in love??? Scandalous! But then, it works for them. And I don't have a problem with it. My parents are very different, but they've managed to come to terms with those differences and have stayed married for over twenty years. They love each other, they just aren't in love (and I guess never have been). And... maybe that's kind of what I want too, in some way? That sort of lifetime roommate situation where you care about each other a lot and you do things together, but it doesn't have to be crazy passionate and romantic. I'm tired of people and their romantic ideals expressing such self-righteous indignation about that. Romantic relationships can be nice and all, but maybe I just want someone I get along with on a reasonable level to make a shared life with, and they don't have to be my best friend (I already have best friends) or a perfect fit. I'm tired of feeling like that's such a bad thing. It's hard enough for me to find people who are tolerable, so maybe I'd be fine with someone acceptable. I think my idea of acceptable is a bit different than my dad's idea (trying to have an intellectual conversation with my mom is like stabbing yourself in the face with a rusty corkscrew), but I mean... generally physically attractive (that's the hard part), reasonably educated, not abusive, self-aware enough to not have seriously undermanaged mental illness or delusional worldviews... Am I asking for too much with that?

Anyway... Kyle is coming to visit me tomorrow, so that's something to look forward to.

Sorry, you do not have permission to comment.

If you are a member, try logging in again or accessing this page here.